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I would say Firefox better watch it's back. Chrome, IE8, and Safari 4 are now all far more responsive browsers. Savvy users may still avoid IE8 because of the

by ryanvm 18y ago

I would say Firefox better watch it's back. Chrome, IE8, and Safari 4 are now all far more responsive browsers. Savvy users may still avoid IE8 because of the mono-culture infection risk, but I think the only thing keeping people off of Chrome is the lack of a plug-in framework.

ROFISH 18y ago
Agreed. With Chrome supporting it's multi-process security and Safari/WebKit exploring the world of ACID3, HTML5, CSS3 and many other advanced "we'll do it later" technologies, the only technical reason why Firefox is still relevant is it's extensions. (Of course there's more social reasons like Safari for Windows lagging, my guess is that it's too "Mac-based" with the custom windowing and font-aliasing.)
- bep 18y ago
  The Firefox 4 beta uses Windows font aliasing. And tries to use the default windows theme, with not so great results.
  - bep 18y ago
    I meant the Safari beta, d-oh
truebosko 18y ago
This is how I feel about Firefox now, but Firefox 3.5 (previous Firefox 3.1 IIRC) is looking pretty impressive. Many features you'd find in Chrome, plus an improved Javascript engine. I'm a Firefox loyalist at the moment, and will stick with it until 3.5. At that point, if it fails to impress I may have to fall back on something else but as a Linux user, my options for Firefox rivals are limited.
run4yourlives 18y ago
I use chrome primarily. I used to be a firefox user, but when 3 was released I was really turned off by both the bug with the profiles that caused it to be the slowest thing I used in years, and the general emacs-ification of what was once a fairly light browser. It was easier to download and give chrome a try than to try and figure out how to fix FF3.
LostInTheWoods 18y ago
I stuck with IE thru 6 and 7. I then downloaded 8, and after one day, I made the switch to Firefox. The thing that pushed me over the edge was the "compatibility" button in IE8, that a user is expected to push when their favorite website won't load. After struggling to view some google sites I frequent, the insanity of it struck me. Then there is the equally insane meta tag, that I now need to put on my site, to ensure IE8 users view my pages in IE7. IE8 seems to struggle with complex Javascript sites. And lastly, then I looked up benchmarks for Browsers. IE8 is far behind the Firefox. IE8 is supposedly 35% faster then IE7, but that is little incentive to stay with it, considefing Firefox is something like 5X faster.

by ryanvm 18y ago

ROFISH 18y ago

Agreed. With Chrome supporting it's multi-process security and Safari/WebKit exploring the world of ACID3, HTML5, CSS3 and many other advanced "we'll do it later" technologies, the only technical reason why Firefox is still relevant is it's extensions. (Of course there's more social reasons like Safari for Windows lagging, my guess is that it's too "Mac-based" with the custom windowing and font-aliasing.)

bep 18y ago
The Firefox 4 beta uses Windows font aliasing. And tries to use the default windows theme, with not so great results.
- bep 18y ago
  I meant the Safari beta, d-oh

truebosko 18y ago

This is how I feel about Firefox now, but Firefox 3.5 (previous Firefox 3.1 IIRC) is looking pretty impressive. Many features you'd find in Chrome, plus an improved Javascript engine. I'm a Firefox loyalist at the moment, and will stick with it until 3.5. At that point, if it fails to impress I may have to fall back on something else but as a Linux user, my options for Firefox rivals are limited.

run4yourlives 18y ago

I use chrome primarily. I used to be a firefox user, but when 3 was released I was really turned off by both the bug with the profiles that caused it to be the slowest thing I used in years, and the general emacs-ification of what was once a fairly light browser. It was easier to download and give chrome a try than to try and figure out how to fix FF3.

LostInTheWoods 18y ago

I stuck with IE thru 6 and 7. I then downloaded 8, and after one day, I made the switch to Firefox. The thing that pushed me over the edge was the "compatibility" button in IE8, that a user is expected to push when their favorite website won't load. After struggling to view some google sites I frequent, the insanity of it struck me. Then there is the equally insane meta tag, that I now need to put on my site, to ensure IE8 users view my pages in IE7. IE8 seems to struggle with complex Javascript sites. And lastly, then I looked up benchmarks for Browsers. IE8 is far behind the Firefox. IE8 is supposedly 35% faster then IE7, but that is little incentive to stay with it, considefing Firefox is something like 5X faster.